Chris:
Can you point me to a “classification *system*” that is not human-created?
Your comments about different classification systems of modern astronomy would seem merely to underline my point, surely: they are all the product of human reasoning backed up, to greater or lesser extents, by observation and calculation.
I’m not suggesting that Lakoff settled anything but at least he and Rosch highlighted and criticised the absence of any serious scientific inquiry into “classical” classification (folk) theory that Western philosophy has unquestioningly assumed and taken as axiomatic for more than two millennia before Wittgenstein started to question it.
Back to my central and main observation: as all classification systems are the product of human creativity, they are eminently copyrightable.
Peter
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Christopher Menzel
Sent: Thursday, 28 October, 2010 11:33
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Copyright in Taxonomies: Leading case in US law (ADA v. Delta Dental)
On 10/28/2010 12:55 PM, Peter F Brown (Pensive) wrote:
> All classification systems are
human-created and none reflect any
> “natural” objective truth or set of “facts”.
On the face of it, a preposterous view -- the classification system of
modern astronomy does not reflect a more objectively correct view of the
physical universe than the Ptolemaic view or -- why not? -- the system
of Thales on which everything is ultimately water? Granted, there are
more sophisticated versions of the thesis, but even then there is
nothing approaching any sort of unanimity on the matter.
> Easterbrook obviously studied
his Lakoff properly.
I guess I missed the memo announcing that Lakoff had settled the
centuries-old debate between realism and anti-realism. That said, the
relevance of the debate to ontological engineering is not at all clear.
But the arguments of Barry Smith and others show, at the least, that
even that is far from settled.
Chris Menzel